


Shadow

by Buttons15



Series: Star Wars AU [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 17:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9451394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buttons15/pseuds/Buttons15
Summary: Star Wars AU: The second meeting between Jedi Satya Vaswani and the slicer only known as "Sombra" as they uncover a scheme lying deep on the heart of the Jedi Order





	

To Satya Vaswani, the Great Jedi Library in Ossus had always felt like a second home. Its long halls extended for meters, so far she could often not see the end. She liked the organization of the place, how the shelves of holocrons and books were sorted by subject and then by year, neatly stacked. She liked the cleanness of the architecture, walls and pillars designed and put together in a way that was not overwhelming. She liked the silence, hardly ever broken because there was just so much more _space_ than _people_.

And then, of course, there was the information. The knowledge. The actual reason she was there - to further her research. With a flick of her fingers she moved files to and fro, taking notes on what she found relevant. Satya could do that for hours on end, sometimes even forgetting to eat or drink. Yawning, she stretched, absently levitating books back to their proper places.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As a Sentinel who had specialized into being a Jedi Shadow, her work was to find and destroy anything related to the sith. She was seventeen when Morrison, the head of their order, put an end to Darth Regnus’ long empire of terror.

Now, six years later, Satya still chased remnants of that past. She’d put an end to several minor cults who sought to continue Regnus’ legacy, and her work so far had been extremely successful in keeping the galaxy at peace.

_And yet._

Her eyes scanned the data she’d collected, a nagging feeling on the back of her mind that she was missing something. She ran her fingers over the datapad, and the holographic screen projected the information she’d stored. Having it all at one place helped visualization, yet she still couldn’t find the missing link.

Her reports of quiet yet organized Sith activity went as far back as one year after Regnus’ fall, when her work had begun. More than once she’d arrived in her destination a mere seconds before entire terminals were wiped out. Captured Sith would suicide rather than talk. For years, she’d chased ghosts around every corner of the galaxy, certain that a connection was there.

With a wave of her hand, she zoomed into more recent developments, which still boggled her mind. Three pictures hovered in the air, and she stared at them for minutes on end, as if by doing so she could extract the truth.

_It doesn’t make any sense._

She focused on the first two: Rutledge and Ziegler, both deserters, both missing. They had disappeared together, taking with them Morrison’s lightsaber crystal. That they were guilty, there was no doubt - as a Weapon Master, Rutledge had access even to the Head of Order’s saber, and footage was clear when it showed the pair’s escape.

_But why?_

That was a question she could not answer. Rutledge was a respected member of the Order, had been one for years, the first man to whom the Jedi would entrust their weapons and ask for battle training. And Ziegler was one of their most prominent knights, her gifts in the arts of healing meeting literally no match in the galaxy. She would have become Chief Healer in no time.

Satya wasn’t close to either, but she’d been acquainted with them both. Their alignment with the dark side was _unthinkable._ She’d witnessed Mako’s proficiency with her own lightwhip. She’d experienced Angela’s healing skills first hand. Neither would be possible with a taint of the dark side.

Their escape had been followed by a distinct and undeniable peak in Sith activity, and the two were charged with treason, for which they were still being hunted. She knew for a fact that Morrison had concentrated a lot of their resources into finding Rutledge in particular, because of what he had stolen.

And while the galaxy was large, the complete lack of information on the two of them as soon as they vanished was suspicious to say the least… which led her to the third and final picture: that of the woman she’d met only a few weeks before, Sombra.

Exhaling, she examined the image: a moving hologram of the other, winking and blowing a kiss. She was, by far, the most frustrating of them all - save for that picture, Satya could find absolutely _nothing_ on her. She was certain that portrait had been left behind on purpose, and her gut told her that their meeting hadn’t been an accident, either. The fact that Sombra seemed to be both a slicer and a force user only increased her concerns.

Satya sighed. The most obvious explanation, of course, was what the Jedi Order had accepted as a truth: Rutledge was a Sith who hid in plain sight after Darth Regnus’ fall. He’d taken Ziegler as his apprentice and the two had stolen the crystal and escaped to the corners of the galaxy, where they now fully dedicated themselves to dark side activities.

It was simple - _deceptively simple_ , Satya believed, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it. She’d actually tried contacting Rutledge and Ziegler - and two weeks later, she’d met the strange slicer who went by Sombra. The more she thought about it, the less of a coincidence it seemed. She was certain her latest acquaintance held the final piece of the puzzle she had been putting together.

Shutting down the projections, she decided to call it a day. She packed her things, hanging her lightwhip on her waist, and stretched when she stood up. She’d continue her research the next day. There was always data to be reviewed, and to Satya it didn’t feel like work at all - she truly enjoyed investigating.

She made her way out of the corridor and towards the door, passing dozens of side entrances on her way. On her pace, it would take her a good ten minutes to exit, and she was still walking at a leisurely pace when something made her stop dead on her tracks - a Force signature utterly unforgettable.

She didn’t think twice - she made a run for it, bolting to the left and then to the right towards the source. Sure enough, there she was - none other than Sombra herself, casually running her index finger over a line of holocrons. Satya skidded to a halt, leaning forward with her hands to her knees to catch her breath.

“You!” She hissed, panting. “What are you doing here?!”

Sombra turned to her and regarded her, absolutely impassive. “Well _princesa,_ what are libraries for?”

Satya straightened up. “Doing research and seeking information, but -”

The other smirked. “Exactly! See? I even brought my library card!” She lifted a small plastic rectangle. The Jedi couldn’t see the name written in it, but the picture was that of a wookie.

“That’s not even you!”

The slicer frowned. “Don’t be insensitive. I’m a werewookie.”

“A _what?!_ ” She blinked, then shook her head and willed her mind back into focus. Sombra laughed.

She remembered how deceptive that woman could be all too well. She still did not know _how_ Sombra had escaped, but she had to assume whatever the other had done could be repeated, and Satya wouldn’t make the mistake of attempting brute force again. She wanted information and she was determined to get it, and she knew she would have to use graceful tactics for that.

So she went with bluntness - it was her expertise and the slicer wouldn’t expect it.

“What are your connections to Rutledge and Ziegler?”

“Aha! Asking the right questions, are you?” Sombra’s eyes twinkled. “Rutledge… don’t know him much. We have a… professional agreement. Works well. No complaints.”

“And Ziegler?” she pressed.

The other’s smile widened. “Ángel and I go way back… she hadn’t even taken her Trials when we met.” A pause. “I stole her first kiss.”

Satya gaped, stunned at the sheer logistical impossibility of what the other was telling her, but quickly recovered. “You were...lovers?”

Sombra waved it off. “Friends with benefits. Just stress relief, if you will.”

She bit her bottom lip in thought. While emotional attachment was strictly forbidden in the Order, casual sexual contact was not - and though only that between man and woman was actually encouraged in order to generate force sensitive children, there were no prohibitions for same gender ‘stress relief’.

She realized she was getting sidetracked, _again_. The possibility that Ziegler had left the order for love would explain her departure, but not that of Rutledge, or the crystal theft, or the rises in Sith activity. It was too simplistic. Her intuition told her there was more. She thought over her next words very carefully.

“I tried to contact her,” Satya admitted. “And...you came for me, didn’t you? You set that heist up. Our meeting was no coincidence.”

The slicer laughed. “Oh, you’re sharp. Ángel told me you were worth saving. Looks like she was right.”

_Worth saving?_

“You’re right, _princesa._ Information isn’t the only reason I came here. I also came for you.” Sombra leaned forward, invading Satya’s personal space, and _booped her on the nose_. The Jedi felt unexplainable heat in her cheeks. “Your research is… not wrong, but not right either. There _was_ a Sith lord keeping Gabo’s legacy. And your poking around…is going to get you into trouble.”

_Was? Did she call Darth Regnus...‘Gabo’?_

The other turned her back and started walking. Satya followed. Sombra confirming her suspicions only raised more questions. Still, she knew keeping the other amused was key, and so she formulated another hypothesis to test.

“Ziegler didn’t leave because she fell to the dark side,” She guessed, things clicking into place. Sombra bristled at her words, and before the slicer could react, she quickly continued, “She left because she found out who this person was. Rutledge, too…?”

“Sí, sí,” Sombra grumbled, not slowing her pace. “ _Now_ you’re on the right track.”

“But that would mean,” she hesitated. “Someone...within the Order.” Satya let the implications of that sink in. “They’d have to be...incredibly powerful.”

“You have no idea,” the other muttered darkly.

The other stopped by a door that read ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ and swiped her library card. The lights over it blinked red twice before blinking green, and the entrance slid open. Sombra stopped and placed her hand on the wall, blocking the entrance.

“Something changed,” Satya concluded. “You and Ziegler...did something, and they reacted. That’s why the Sith have stirred.”

 “Ah…not quite. What we did...is beyond your imagination, _princesa._ You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Sombra smiled, predatory. It sent a shiver down Satya’s spine.

 “Try me.”

Sombra shook her head. “That is a secret not only mine to share. What I _can_ show you, however, lies just behind this door. The Great Library terminal has access to every major database in the Order...you just have to slice right.” She winked. “But the truth is not something you can turn back from, once you’ve seen it. So I’ll ask you and I’ll only ask once: are you ready for what you’ll find?”

A conspiracy on the highest ranks of the Order. It crossed her mind that the other could be outright lying, of course, and though she had no reason to believe the woman, as long as the information she was given matched her own suspicions, there was no need for trust.

Satya had no doubt in her heart of what she wanted.

“Yes.”

“Follow me.” Sombra strolled in and connected her datapad to the computer. As soon as Satya passed, the heavy metal door slid shut and the six-monitor screen blinked into life. The slicer swiped her library card. A moment later, the words ‘High Level Acess: Authorized’ flashed, and they pulled chairs and took their seats. The other hit a bunch of keys and a list of names appeared.

“Did it never strike you as suspicious,” Sombra flashed her a grin, “That some padawans had their trials on actual Sith ruins? Seems very hardcore, doesn’t it? To send a trainee to places even experienced knights won’t go.”

“I…Trials were not my field of research,” she admitted. “I never looked into details like where they were happening. Besides my own, I don’t know much about how they go.”

“Look,” the slicer pointed to the screen.

  * _ARGON, Marc-Andr: deceased._
  * _ASTO, Rath: deceased._
  * _DELLFIN, Kaida: deceased._
  * _KODD, Sienna: successfully introduced._
  * _LAUDERSLAG, Enric: deceased._
  * _LOPEZ, Ariel: deceased._
  * _MONTAG, Tarc: successfully introduced._
  * _MEFRID, Jann: deceased._
  * _RHADE, Victor: deceased._
  * _ZIEGLER, Angela: successfully introduced._



“What…is that.” She leaned forward to scan the names. The file was named after its year, and the folder contained half a dozen more, similarly organized.

“It’s simple, really,” the other leaned back on her chair. “Sith ruins open to Sith magic. You send your baby Jedi to a place like that and tell them not to come back until they reach the very end, well, there’s two ways that may play out. Three, if you count running as an option – but those who ran were…silenced, if you will. The others, though?”

“They were tainted…or they died.” The implications of that hit her like a brick. “Ziegler –”

“Does not have a single drop of Sith to her,” Sombra snapped. “ _I_ cleared that path open. Of course, your resident Darth couldn’t have guessed that. You’re a smart woman, Satya. Tell me what happened then.”

The fact that Sombra was capable of dark side Force abilities did not surprise her. She put that information aside for the time being. “They thought they had footing,” she figured. “A window to approach her…where there was none.”

“Excellent.” The slicer tapped her finger on the arm of the chair. “Do you see now, _princesa_ , what made Ángel flee?”

“And Rutledge?”

“Had known for a long time. Had his hands tied, though. Could not escape without backing. Ángel had something he didn’t.”

“You.”

“Me.” Sombra grinned. “Well done, Jedi. Of course, Sith methods are often…costly in terms of life. So the Jedi Academy isn’t the only place apprentices were being plucked from. If you look hard enough, you’ll find that sometimes, ‘ten force sensitive children found’ became ‘nine’, and since you get hundreds of those, no one is the wiser. ”

“The name,” Satya asked, no longer able to hold herself back. “Who are they? I need a name.”

Sombra held her gaze. “I think you know the answer to that one, too. You know the ways of the Sith, Vaswani. You can put it together. Who was their master?”

“Darth Regnus, has to be,” she closed her eyes. “Someone that powerful, there’s no one else who could have trained them.”

“Mmm-hhm. And what do Sith Masters usually die from?”

“Murder?” She frowned, thinking.

“Well, duh,” Sombra replied in a flat tone. “Murder by…?”

“Their…apprentices, more often than not, but…” her eyes shot open. “But that would mean…”

“Congratulations, you’ve got it.”

“ _Morrison?_ ” She rose from her chair. “That’s – that’s –”

“Impossible?” the other grinned. “Is it really?”

Satya pinched the bridge of her nose. “You mean to tell me the head of the Jedi Order is in fact a _Sith_?”

Sombra kicked her legs up the terminal table, crossing them at the ankles. “You tell me. Is he?”

She paced around the room, her brain working at a million miles an hour. “He’d need incredible power just to keep himself hidden –”

“ – he has it. Speaking from experience.”

“You’ve _faced_ him?” She shook her head to clear it. “It’s not unlikely he does, he did kill Darth Regnus, but – he’d need…conspirators.”

“Like Kodd, Montag, and all the others who made it out of the ruins on the years before and after?” she leaned forward. “How much of your Order is playing for the enemy? That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“You’d need the name of all the padawan he’d tried to corrupt,” Satya walked back to the woman. “Those are the safe bets, of course, but that wouldn’t stop others from falling, so –”

“There’s a simpler way,” Sombra lifted the wookie library card. “I’ve faked my credentials. Now all I need is to look for Morrison’s Sith name.”

“You have that?”

“Of course I have that.” Putting her feet back on the ground, she moved to the terminal and typed.

_‘Darth Legius’_

It took a moment for the server to react. When it did, however, information started popping on all monitors at once, and Satya caught flashes of pictures – hooded figures looming over children, a fleet of freighters and even what seemed like an active Sith Academy. A bar on the bottom showed Sombra’s data recovery progress, and when it reached a hundred per cent, the slicer’s datapad beeped.

“Gotcha,” the other smirked.

And then the lights blinked out for a fraction of second. Satya would have blamed it on a simple glitch, but Sombra seemed to know better. The woman’s eyes widened.

“Uh-oh. I should have seen that coming.” She grit her teeth. “Well played, Jack. Come on, _princesa_ , we need to get out of here.”

“What?!”

“Looks like I tripped every alarm flag from here to all the planet’s two moons,” Sombra stood. “We should make a run for it.”

“We’re in the middle of a Jedi library,” Satya pointed out. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

 “Trust me, _amiga,_ you do not want to ask that question – _Mierda._ ” She turned her attention back to the server and typed. A moment later, the monitors blinked, each showing live feed from a different camera. Satya spotted the door next to them, towards which a couple library staff ran.

“Let me talk to them,” she frowned. “I can probably pull rank.”

“No, you can’t,” Sombra replied, interacting with the server. A facial recognition software booted up, and the names of the Jedi outside were displayed onscreen. One of them blinked red. “Morrison doesn’t slack in his control. At least one of them is with him. God knows how many others. We’ll have to fight our way out, _princesa._ ”

She bit her bottom lip in thought. “Maybe not. Give me your lightsaber.”

“Uhhh…well, here goes.” The slicer threw her the weapon.

Satya flicked it on. The saber flashed the seven colors of the rainbow in quick succession before settling on bright purple.

_What the hell._

She gave the other a sideway glare, and Sombra shrugged with a sheepish smile. Carefully, she pressed the tip of the laser beam to the ground and pushed. It sunk on the stone floor. She had to apply quite a lot of pressure to get it to cut, but it worked, slowly but surely carving out bits of the stone floor.

“Ohh. Unconventional. I like it.”

It took her almost a full five minutes to cut through, silently praying no one in the floor below would notice. All the while, Sombra worked on keeping the room’s door shut. Satya kicked the floor when she was done cutting, and it gave in with a _thud._ She looked down the hole that led to the underground archives and found the room empty.

Satya turned the saber off and handed it back to Sombra, and then the two slid down and ran. She knew the great library like the back of her hand, so it took her little time to guide the other to one of the place’s many back exits. Once they had put a safe distance between themselves and their pursuers, they stopped to get some air.

 “What now?” She asked.

Sombra shrugged. “Ángel wanted me to warn you and so I did. What you’ll do with that is not my problem anymore. Me, I have a list of Sith to hunt down.” She turned her back and started walking.

“Then I’m coming with you,” Satya gave chase. “Purging the galaxy from the dark side is what I’ve trained to do.”

Sombra halted and crossed her arms over her chest. “Woah, _princesa_ , you’re cute and all, but you can’t just invite yourself to my ship like that.”

“Why not?” she pressed. “Two people will work more efficiently than one.”

“Listen, you’re a _Jedi,_ ” the other said the word as if it was the name of a disease. “Your lot and I…usually don’t get along.”

“You and Ziegler are friends,” Satya pointed out.

“ _Sí_ , but that’s because she gets along with _everyone,_ ” the slicer shot back. “She’s a singularity. You…are the very embodiment of the Order’s values. It’s not going to work.”

Only a couple days before, Satya would have taken those words as a compliment. Right then, though, she wasn’t sure what to feel. “Then give me the names at least.”

Sombra wavered. “You really want to do this, don’t you? _Que mierda, princesa._ They’re going to kick you out, you know that, right?”

“Wasn’t you the one who said you cannot turn back from the truth?”

“ _Que mierda,_ ” Sombra repeated. “All right. Fine.”

She extended her hand. Satya hesitated for a split second before shaking it.

“Welcome aboard.”

**Author's Note:**

> So there you have it! As always, thanks for the friends on the discord server and to Bzarcher for the beta!
> 
> \- As it turns out, Jack is the main antagonist in the AU. He and Gabriel have one messy background of jedi-turned-sith featuring Reaper76 with lightsabers that obviously ended in murder.
> 
> \- Sombra's lightsaber is a constant prototype weapon and every time you look at it, she's installed a new gimmick
> 
> \- I hope you people like Sombra because her backstory is going to be huge
> 
> \- So up next: Sombra backstory where you find out what exactly she and Angela did, then more phamercy in space feat Hana, then Satya and Sombra hunting for sith feat Lucio.
> 
> \- Thanks again for reading, dropping off kudos and commenting, you make my day!


End file.
